Dad was successful initially through sheer force of will. Though his job was primarily in advertising and promotion, he personally touched every piece of the sales funnel--placing ads in the local papers, orchestrating mass mailings, being the voice of God in local TV and radio ads, donning his tuxedo on Saturday mornings and welcoming people into his clients' dealerships, and even at times selling the cars. At night, he'd come home exhausted, usually not having eaten all day. He'd loosen his tie and fix himself a drinkie winkie. Mom would ask, "How many?" Sometimes it was a number in the twenties, sometimes it was more.
For several years Dad sent out these massive mailings for his clients. He wrote and designed the materials; picked them up from the printer and then personally dropped off boxes of mailers, envelopes, and reams of names and stamps at the homes of my mom's girlfriends. They would hand-address, stamp and stuff, making maybe 40 bucks per job. For particularly big jobs my Dad employed his kids. It took a while before I was allowed to write on the envelopes--Dad wanted the writing to look professional--but eventually I got my own lists. I felt proud being trusted enough to help.
After several years Dad became more efficient. He printed labels for the mailers, which saved time and looked better. Still I think he did things the hard way. His business didn't have nearly the scope of one that would necessitate funding, but I don't think Dad thought along those lines anyway--of borrowing money to make more money, or of hiring staff in order to free him up to do more high-level thinking. His only "employee" was his unpaid bookkeeper, my mother, who admits her only qualification for the job was an ability to balance a checkbook. My father was a quick learner, but I do wonder now if things would have been different if he'd consulted others as he grew.
I hadn't noticed right away that the business was failing. Dad's ambition had transferred to Lake Michigan; Dad had bought a used sailboat to replace a tiny one he bought after he'd gotten married, and then upgraded that one. He became Commander of his region of the Midwestern Open Racing Fleet. Instead of coming home spent in a tuxedo, he'd come home sunburned and smelling like the lake. But even this pursuit died, perhaps around the time when Dad stopped caring about the business.
We all try and guess the reason this happened. My Mom thinks one of the factors was the downturn in the market in the late 80s. Dad used to do his own taxes and was audited, and ended up owing a lot of money. No one knows if my father had defaulted on purpose; he was always a rule hater but never a breaker. After that, Mom thinks, he wondered what was the point of making it on your own if you have to give so much away to the government.
I think it was more complicated than that. As an entrepreneur I've come to learn how isolating and identity shattering starting your own business can be. I've gone into consulting, and quit, and returned to the corporate world, and quit, and started consulting again, and quit, and so on and so on. The difference this time around is a purpose larger than myself, and my reliance on others to make the business thrive and grow larger than me. For my Dad there was no outlet beyond himself. He was the driver, the cause, the one who got both the glory and the blame. At some point, I believe, as he came home week after week from the dealerships, with increasingly lower sales, he stopped believing in himself. He had never prepared for failure, only for the climb upward.
I went to college and missed the complete collapse of not only my Dad's business, but his attitude toward work. I caught glimpses of change when I came home to visit. His car had stopped running and was left to rot behind our house. The roof on the house was falling apart. His boat had been left in the lake one winter, unclaimed, and had to be confiscated by the city. He rarely ever left the house. He had moments of inspiration and futzed around on his computer, wrote op-eds to the local papers, watched C-Span and called in to talk to Congressmen, took on stints of work with some family members, played bridge online, and read, copiously. But it was clear he no longer had a desire to work like he did when he first became an entrepreneur.
Once her kids had grown my mother started to work full-time. But after 11 years she learned that her position was being relocated, and my Dad knew he had to start looking for a job. He had many strikes against him, a man in his late 50s with a spotty-to-non-existent employment record over the past 15 years, and self-employment before that. He did eventually find a job doing what he'd come to learn by working with his former clients--selling cars.
He dutifully worked his hours and even took pride in the products, insisting to his kids that we really didn't know just how impressive Buicks could be. When I visited from California, he shared stories of whom he encountered at the dealership, young couples buying their first cars, or older people trading in their beloved 25-year-old vehicles. Some bought cars, some didn't; but they all were included in his stories. He seemed more sanguine, or content, or maybe he was just punch drunk from years of struggling with work. He'd given up on the idea of proving himself. He was humbled. He was also dying.
When Dad passed away at 60 he left almost nothing. I'd always harbored these hopes that despite his 15-year hiatus from work Dad always had a plan. Things were growing; he just hadn't shown us where he hid his ambitions. I expected incomplete manuscripts, unfinished business plans, an account opened for the purposes of starting a small-scale venture. But there wasn't anything, not even savings. He had really died at 45, when he lost his desire to work.
It's possible that Dad just wanted to make it to age 65, when he could be officially retired. Tomorrow would have been my Dad's 65th birthday. I think about this phantom milestone and wonder, what would he have done next?
